MARQUETTE — Marijuana has and will be in the news a lot this year.

So, it was timely that Northern Michigan University hosted a community cannabis forum Sept. 18 at the West Science building. Groups whose views were represented at the event included the Students for Sensible Drug Policy and MI Legalize.

Appearing on the Nov. 6 ballot in Michigan will be Proposal 1, which would permit anyone over age 21 to possess and grow personal-use quantities of cannabis and related concentrates, and allow licensing activities related to commercial marijuana production and retail marijuana sales.

Speaking remotely via the web was Nadir Pearson, a former Division I football player at Brown University who retired from the sport after suffering concussions stemming from high school. He then started a career in cannabis using his photography and cinematography skills to create digital marketing strategies.

“The more I kept learning about cannabis, the more that I realized that this isn’t bad,” Pearson said. “It’s actually good, not just for me, for the world, and all the different ways that it can be used.”

Nick Zettell, Michigan field manager for the Denver-based SSDP, talked about the issue as one of the panelists at the event.

“We believe that the drug use and abuse should be treated as a public health issue, not as a criminal justice issue,” Zettell said.

SSDP recently joined the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, which was formed to support the ballot initiative to end marijuana prohibition and establish a system in which marijuana is regulated and taxed similarly to alcohol.

According to its website at RegulateMI.org, Michigan’s ballot initiative will give the authority to restrict or ban marijuana businesses. Driving under the influence still will be illegal. Also, businesses will retain their right to test and ban their employees from using, and public consumption also will be against the law.

Panelist Steven Williams, a NMU graduate in business who works for Agrimote Solutions, calls himself a “cannabis entrepreneur.”

What’s important in the cannabis issue, he stressed, is taking away the stigma.

“What our policy does, it stigmatizes,” Williams said. “It makes common people, normal people, into shady criminals, and criminality of drugs overall is not good because it should be treated as a public health issue.”

Everything is bad when there’s too much of it, but not when there’s moderation, he said.

“I think that if people weren’t lured by the illegality and mystery behind experimenting with drugs and knowing that some drugs we just probably shouldn’t be taking — and some drugs that are beneficial in certain ways — having that being the status quo as a society is probably the most beneficial thing any of us can do here,” Williams said.

Zettell said that he was arrested at age 18 for possessing less than a gram of marijuana, about the size of a joint. He ended up being on probation for a year, plus he tried to keep the incident under wraps since he was working at the time.

“That was definitely something that helped inspire me,” said Zettell, who noted he saw how “zany and cruel” the criminal justice system can be.

Williams, who also was arrested for a similar offense, later acquired “intimate knowledge” of how doctors overprescribe medications and were pushed by pharmaceutical companies.

“It’s all at the public’s expense,” Williams said.

That means being a “conscientious objector” in those situations, as he put it.

“You can’t sit back and watch society being taken advantage of,” Williams said.

Panelist Lesley Putman, a professor in the NMU Department of Chemistry, acknowledged she used to take the bus from Munising to Marquette where she met a man who was unable to drive because he had been convicted of possessing a small amount of a drug.

“It just struck me as being just crazy that he was having to do probation and all this stuff,” Putman said.

NMU has a four-year undergraduate degree program in medical plant chemistry. However, it has limitations.

NMU has to abide by federal laws since it receives federal funding, so as long as cannabis is illegal at that level, it cannot be possessed on campus, she said. However, Michigan has a provision for universities to work with hemp, although NMU doesn’t have a site yet for growing it.

“That’s a long way off, but I think what it does for our program is that it’s going to provide a lot more opportunities for internships because there will be more facilities,” Putman said.

Change could occur sooner at the state level.

Zettell believes there will be moves made to make sure that expungement and exoneration are included in Michigan law, which would begin upon legalization of cannabis in November.

He also noted that with an excise tax and a 6 percent sales tax, an estimated $100 million to $200 million is expected in annual revenue, with things like infrastructure and public education benefiting.

“I think this will be a boon to the economy and the population in the Upper Peninsula,” Zettell said.

Cannabis will continue to be a topic of discussion at NMU.

NMU alumnus Robert Torrence will return to campus this week to give a presentation titled “Residual and acute effects of cannabis on emotional processing in anxiety disorders.” His talk, scheduled from 4 to 5 p.m. Friday in Jamrich 1100, is open to the public.

Torrence, a 2015 graduate, is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Pharmacy Practice at Wayne State University. His research is focused on using cannabis to help patients with post-traumatic stress disorder during extinction learning and exposure therapy.

Also, a medical cannabis symposium is set for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 6 at Jamrich Hall, where topics like the chemistry and pharmacology of cannabis, the social impact of its legalization, Michigan cannabis laws, and medical cannabis in K-12 schools will be discussed.

The event is free for NMU students and faculty members who register beforehand. Tickets are $30 for general admission and $20 per person for groups of six or more.

To register, visit mycompassion.org/nmusymposium.